In general, a Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is used to manage routers and switches of a typical network. The SNMP is a protocol for information exchanged between network devices in order to manage a network. A SNMP agent mounted at a router or a switch transmits a device state and a network state to a SNMP manager. The SNMP manager checks a traffic amount of each port of a network device, an error state generated in data transmission, and unused ports using the information transmitted from the SNMP agent.
Although the SNMP is a simple protocol and widely used to manage a network, the SNMP has several drawbacks. The SNMP manager regularly performs a polling process to collect data from a SNMP agent. Through the polling processes, the SNMP manager collects information on network devices. Such polling processes increase an overall traffic amount of a network. Thus, an overall network performance may be deteriorated due to traffic increment. Further, some of information on network devices may be lost during transmission due to data traffic congestion. However, such lost information may not be recognized by the SNMP manager or the SNMP agent.
In order to overcome such drawbacks of the SNMP, a TRAP technology was intruded. The TRAP technology is an asynchronous communication scheme that enables a SNMP agent to transmit critical network states to a SNMP manager such as when a network device is turned on and off or when a specific port becomes malfunctioned.
Since the TRAP technology is a User Datagram Protocol (UDP) based technology, the TRAP technology does not require acknowledgement for receiving information on network states. Due to absence of receipt acknowledgement, the TRAP technology has an unreliability problem in data transmission. Further, a man power is required to manage a network in order to manage a network according to network state information. The requirement of man power increases a network managing cost. Also, a system availability problem may be arisen because network error is not handled in real time.